


Why Can't We Be Friends

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Clones, Dubious Consent, Hux is Not Nice, Kylo Ren The Awkward Virgin, M/M, Pre-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 06:40:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10657023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: Hux is an efficient man. In that respect, it's no surprise he would go to extraordinary lengths to make sure thatallhis work is completed to his ownveryexacting standards.Of course Ren has to ruin it for everybody.





	Why Can't We Be Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cormallen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cormallen/gifts).



> This is a fill for the @[kyluxhardkinks](http://kyluxhardkinks.tumblr.com/%22) prompt found [here](http://kyluxhardkinks.tumblr.com/post/159013941769/kylo-clan-techie-prompt-anonymous-said). I'm terrible at following prompts, so it doesn't go along with it to the letter, but hopefully it works on some level anyway.
> 
> My disclaimers today are that I've never seen _Dredd_ , so Techie's characterisation is probably way off course. With that said, in this story Techie is very much a clone of Hux, and so he in turn behaves more like Hux, even though he's his own person. If that makes any sense.
> 
> Also, I've been going through Some Shit in my personal life the last month or so, and this is the first fic I've written since it started; I was actually terrified for a while there that the ability to write had deserted me completely, so I'm going to say that that might account for any strangeness in this, both in narrative choices and in the actual execution of them. Or at least, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.
> 
> ETA: the wonderful @elviscl said, when I originally babbled about the prompt on tumblr, that "If you write it, I'll draw it!" and...bless us all, [it's here](http://elviscl.tumblr.com/post/160110540875/for-claricechiarasorcha-i-said-if-she-wrote), and it's wonderful. <3 <3 <3

Most people who infuriated Ren could be dealt to in one of two ways: with casual disregard, or with concentrated destruction. And yet, while his Master had taught him how to harness the deep and dark power of said destruction many a year beforehand, it was the disregard that he most often had to utilise. Particularly in the case of the general, whom it had been made clear he was _not_ to murder, under any circumstance.

With that said, the true issue came from the fact that Ren was not even entirely sure that _murder_ was what he wanted to do to the bastard, anyway.

Armitage Hux had been the academy slut, or so the rumours said. As he’d climbed the ranks, hand over gloved fist, the man had in turn become somewhat more…sparing…in the spread of his affections. But enough people had had a taste then to pass on the knowledge – and the desire of experience – to others aboard Hux’s command.

Kylo Ren, by comparison, was only an awkward, aging virgin; he had barely even kissed another individual, and certainly had never got so far as a sweaty clumsy hand in anyone else’s basics. But then, even if he had managed such a feat, it wasn’t as if he’d have known what to _do_ with the cock or cunt within.

Of course it would be easy enough for a man of his own…unique…talents to seek out the baser thoughts of others, to gain and glean from them the experience he would need before proceeding onwards. It was not even if they needed to remember, after; it would be easier still, to strip from the minds of those susceptible the memory of the hulking, inexperienced dark-haired man who had so fumbled at their laces, their buttons, at the flesh concealed beneath the uniform each of them wore.

But Ren had no desire to do it. Only that whip-thin body, a flash of red-gold hair, the cool eyes and the twist of generous lips beneath – only that combination together could coax forth an awakening, an aching quickening of spirit and lust.

Given that fact, it was not even worth taking the memories and experiences of others. While they might become useful in some circumstances, in this they were only muddled and muddied, leaving Ren caught in sensation he did not even want to feel. All he wanted, in the end, was Hux beneath his hands, white skin bruising in purple and blue beneath the black of his own gloves.

But every time the man caught his eye, sneering across the bridge – Ren knew that even by force, he could not take what he wanted of Armitage Hux. Not until Hux himself wanted to take the same in return.

But when he saw in the mind of the lieutenant a vision of long white limbs and pulsar-bright hair, blue eyes sharp and generous lips twisted around his pleasure – Ren knew that in the end, it would be someone other than Hux he would have.

But only because the vision himself _looked almost exactly like Hux._

This third option had been…unexpected. Unaccounted for, even. And perhaps not even entirely applicable, even to his particular situation. But in his lives, varied and peculiar as they had been, Ren had never taken well to denial. And there were few things that he would give up once he knew they could conceivably be taken.

Gathering information on this odd development could hardly be difficult, when so few amongst the Order had ever been trained against one such as himself. It still surprised him that Hux himself could demonstrate considerable resistance to such probings. Ren did wonder if it were a natural ability; Hux appeared to be Force-null in a manner almost aggressive. But the way he had dismissed Ren’s abilities from the moment of their first meeting perhaps said much for it. Hux had little use for the Force, and so, he saw no need to acknowledge its influence on his life – nor even its very existence. He did not interfere with Ren’s work. Certainly, he would not have been able to even had he tried. But Ren’s work was his own, and as long as it did not hinder that of the general, he cared little enough about how Ren got it cone.

Ren had tried, in the beginning, to goad him into some sort of reaction. It was never anything overly dramatic: just little tricks, flashes and displays of power that had the other officers exchanging concerned looks, skin pale and eyes lightly glazed. Such rigidity as had been drummed into their fragile eggshell minds never took well to the way such power teased at the very seams of reality, at least as they knew it. Kylo Ren’s very presence revealed the raw chaos that surged and squirmed beneath the veneer of perfect order. And every little thing in the Order had its place, its purpose. Hux himself had proven from almost babyhood to be a zealot to the cause.

But he barely blinked to see anything that Ren had done. He sailed past as he always had, a ship set impeccably on course. Whatever magics Ren worked, they existed deep in the dark waters beneath his even keel – and as long as the storms Ren conjured did not affect his own route, Hux could care less for what he could not see. Did not _want_ to see.

And Ren, no matter how he tried, could never even make him _look_.

He moved now deep into different depths: the bowels of the great beast named _Finalizer_ , the behemoth flagship that still would never compare to the juggernaut under Snoke’s own personal command. But it had proved apparently enough, even for a general in relentless pursuit of a glory that would outstrip that of those who came before him. For the longest time Ren had not even known the man’s given name. It seemed peculiar, given what rumours he had heard of the general’s past. But then: by annexing that name completely, it could only but utilise the erasure of his father. There certainly was only one Hux in the Order, now. If the general had his way, there would only ever be one of that name spoken of in their grand history.

He could never speak of such things to him, perhaps. But Ren knew how it was: this desire to strip away the entire paternal line. To be born only of what mattered. To become only that which would could sustain true power.

Despite the constant thrum of the great engines, the hum of the greater reactor that kept them running: these lower gantries proved oddly silent. Moving in these deep and narrow corridors, Ren found himself alone, save for the incurious mechanical eyes of the holofeed cameras. No Stormtroopers came through here, and the passage of officers was rare enough; it was the domain of only technicians and engineers, and it seemed even they had little business in this place.

Ren had expended very little effort in finding the information that had guided him here. That was possibly for the best, considering that if he incapacitated one of Hux’s officers – particularly one the man himself used himself as an aide-de-camp – there would be _questions_. Even if Ren chose not to answer them, as was so often his preferred method of dealing with such annoyance, Hux had a way of ferreting out his own answers. As someone who relied on the Force in such matters, it would be almost admirable to see Hux’s efficient results, if the entire thing hadn’t also been so kriffing _irritating_. But he would not have Hux here. He could _not_ have Hux involved in this. Not yet, at least.

And so it was startling, then, to walk into the small, claustrophobic space, windowless and almost airless, lit only by the dull blue hum of multiple screens, and – when the only occupant of the room turned in his chair to face him, it was him.

It was _Hux_.

“You’re not Hux.”

The harsh staccato of the words, ragged and sharpened through the vocoder, seemed to leave little impression upon the man. Instead, he only stared at Ren for long moments, thoughtful, almost unconcerned. The hair, parted near the middle, lacked the brightness it should have possessed; it lay lank against his skull, curling down and around where neck gave way to collarbone. The skin itself was near sickly in the artificial glare of data rolling across the screen, with eyebrows so pale they almost vanished into the papery flesh. The grim industrial yellow of his clothing, more rags than uniform, only made matters worse, and his feet were bare beneath the hang of too-large trousers. And then, his _eyes_ —

They blinked. In the continued silence, the faintest whir of mechanics shuddered between them like blastershot. And he sighed, shook his head with sudden long-suffering weariness. “I’m not the General, no.”

Ren did not step forward. But the door had long since closed between them, and the ship beyond this place. “Do they call you anything?”

“They call you Kylo Ren,” he observed, and this second sigh held the weight of an artificial gravity far beyond that which sustained basic life. “Are you here to dispose of me?”

“What?”

Ren’s surprise appeared to mean little to him, though one hand moved to pick absently at a small spool of copper wire, tangled at his side. “I figure there’s no need for names, if you’re just here to do Armitage’s dirty work.” And then his lips curled, giving him a striking resemblance to the general during a particularly substandard troop inspection. “Unless you need my designation to make sure you have the right one, I suppose.”

“How many of you are there?” The question exploded from him more as a demand, his voice rising like molten magma. “ _What_ are you?”

That turned him to silence, left him watchful. Yet he had not even risen from his seat, the tatty and well-used workchair locked to the floor before his station. The screens at his back still blinked over, processing an endless stream of information that Ren’s own eyes barely skipped over before glazing, mind already rebelling at the thought of such intake.

They moved instead to the workstation itself, and he focused for the first time upon the strange menagerie that walked the plains there. The copper wire he’d noticed earlier apparently had some use to him beyond the technical; he’d taken it to new and strange places instead, strung and twisted it into animals that went beyond what even Ren himself could identify. But when he glanced up, he found the man just the same, still silent and watchful. For the first time he took note of the tattoo that arced over one of his strange eyes. “ _Male_ ,” he read, slow and more careful than the word really entailed. And even his quick mind rebelled at the sudden implication. “So there are _fem—_ ”

“I don’t know. That’s well above any clearance I have.” He spoke quick, short, not quite clipped – again, that resignation of earlier seemed to colour his words in grey and black. “Did Armitage only send you here for me, then?”

“ _Armitage_ sent me nowhere.”

Again, he blinked, but did not move. “Oh.”

The crackle of the vocoder had been harsh, hard, for all that the other man had not backed away. Ren had sent armed and armoured Stormtroopers scattering to the distant worlds with far less. But then: there was nowhere for him to go. Ren supposed his clearance might not even allow him out of this room, let alone the entire sector. Perhaps that was something of the reason why he raised hands to his head, the release of the mouthpiece, and lifted his helmet away.

A blink, and then the whir again of those strange eyes focusing. “Well, I really must be marked for retirement,” he said, rich with irony; it almost made him sound like the man whose face he shared. “I guess your face is what people see only before they die, right?”

He didn’t mean to ask, and yet he could not hold back his almost curious tone. “Do you want to die?”

“Well, I don’t exactly _live_ down here.” With a nod to his side, the man raised one slender hand, let it fall; the calluses across the fingertips were white and harsh in the blue light. “Are you going to use that, then? Or is it going to be the more traditional invisible chokehold thing?”

He leaned back, arms folded across the plain of his chest, lightsaber on display but pointedly untouched. “You don’t seem very concerned about your fate.”

“Fate isn’t meant for people like me.”

Again he fell to staring, and Ren this time did much the same in return. It was those _eyes_ , and not only the odd mechanical nature of them. Around them were twin haloes of reddened skin that made it look as though he’d been weeping in relentless bouts. Yet his odd equilibrium suggested he’d moved well beyond such display a long, long time before.

Ren shifted closer, each footfall heavy in a way it did not have to be. Now the man with Hux’s face did lean back, even as Ren in turn continued forward to loom over him. Such motion came so easy; he’d long had the height for such intimidation, but the matching bulk of his body: he’d _worked_ for that. He had the Force, would always have the Force, but still he made sure he would always have too the strength and the stamina of a body honed to that of a warrior.

“I could just take your name from your mind, you know.”

But even as he tilted his head upward, the man displayed no real discomfort at Ren’s new proximity. “It’s not really worth the taking,” he said, utterly without artifice. “I barely call it my own, anyway.”

He did not move. “What is it?”

And though he had not imbued the words with any particular compulsion, Techie answered easy, answered quick enough. “They call me Techie.” One hand rose, passed over the screens at his back, hemming him in from both sides. “It’s how I pass the time, at least.”

Turning his head, Ren squinted again at the displays, still took no real meaning from any of them. “You’re his clone.”

“Yes.”

When he looked back, still Techie gazed up at him with impassive regard. With every passing moment it only became all the more odd, how he showed no fear. But then, it was something shared with Hux himself, for all Ren suspected it stemmed from different sources. From considerably different experiences, even.

“Armitage is trained as an engineer, and had has a natural ability for it,” Techie said, bland and simple as a textbook. “I have the same skills, although more rigid training. I never spent any time in the military.” With this a small and sarcastic smile crossed his features, this one purely _Hux_. “In case it wasn’t obvious, I mean.”

This time Ren did look more closely at the screens, though they still made precious little sense to him. “So he has you for the work he doesn’t have time to do himself?”

“Well, in a way, he _is_ the one doing it.” He wasn’t smiling now, for all the words seemed like they ought to have been amused. “And isn’t it just an efficient use of time and resources?”

He lapsed to silence then, though his peculiar eyes told a stranger story, where they continued to meet Ren’s own. Of the people he had known, since leaving Skywalker’s school, only his Master and the general had ever been able to do the same. And still there was l no fear in him. Just: resignation.

“Although perhaps I am not as useful a resource as I have been,” he added, thoughtful; Ren’s reply came abrupt, almost brutal.

“I didn’t come here to kill you.”

“Oh.” His surprise proved only fleeting, dissolving quick enough to mere sigh. “You’re one of _those_ , then.”

“What do you mean?” he said, too sharp, though it was easy enough to take his meaning. The lieutenant, whose on-shift daydreams had led Ren to this place: he was not an isolated case. And Techie, before him now, had a mind that became but a flood of images, of _memories_.

And his revulsion twisted his stomach, though he pulled back too late. “And Hux just… _lets_ them have you? Whenever they want you?”

A short laugh, and Techie half-turned back to his screens; one flick of his eyes and a quick tap of fingers later, and his eyes had returned to Ren alone. “Well, he can’t have them all himself. Not that he has many of them at all; he has a reputation to uphold. But their loyalty to him is paramount. It’s not just loyalty to the Order – he wants their _love_ , you know.” He paused, a moment; one finger pressed over the back of some spindly-legged creature, pushed down until it began to bow. “And he knows better than anyone that that love has to go both ways, somehow, sometimes. If you want people to _really_ devote themselves to you and your cause.”

Ren had no words for that. He only watched, though the back did not break. And Techie withdrew his fingers, tilted his head in a gesture almost canine.

“But didn’t you know that already?”

It was curious, more than accusatory. Ren still found his tone defensive, in a way he rarely used with anyone but his Master. “I saw you.” And then, almost mutinous: “In the mind of one of his lieutenants.”

“Oh. _Him_.” But a moment later the crinkles in his nose smoothed out, and he seemed only weary, again. “Well, I guess it’s him you mean. He’s a crier. He wants to worship me.” His laughter was sharp then, too sudden in the thickened warm air. “Sometimes I’m surprised Armitage doesn’t keep him for himself. He really does like it when people treat him like royalty, after all.”

At last, Ren leaned back. Techie did not move, but again, that resigned look leaked across his features like water. And with Techie still gazing up at him like this, in theory, the power balance tilted strongly Ren’s way. But in his chair, he remained relaxed, certain of his place: almost a king upon his throne, master of his own small domain. And with it came the fleeting thought of Hux: all in pure white, a golden laurel crown set upon the blaze of his bloodied red hair.

“Would you have me?” he asked, without thinking too hard on consequence. In that way he had, Techie blinked again, words even in the voice that pitched just ever so slightly higher than Hux’s own.

“Would it be my choice?”

“ _Yes_.” It was sudden, fierce. “Take me. And _only_ me. And there would never be any other.”

When he blinked this time, he only did it just once. “What would Armitage say?”

“ _Fuck_ Armitage.”

The faintest curl of laughter escaped chapped lips, brittle and breaking, like fallen dry leaves. “Isn’t that what this is about?” But before Ren could answer – before he could even evaluate the words enough to give an answer – Techie waved it all away. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it. I’m sick of them: the officers, the ‘troopers, the engineers, the technicians who get distracted halfway through and try to redo my own equations.” And he leaned back in his chair, still looking ever upward. “Come on, then.”

Ren had fallen to almost absolute stillness. “You want to do it now?”

“Don’t you?”

There was heat, in his groin; a curl of desire that rose like steam, wrapping tight around his heart, pushing his pulse just a little faster. He _did_ want it. He’d wanted it of the general from the first time they’d met – to push that prissy little mouth down against his own cock, to turn him around and bend him over one of his pristine consoles, to pound him until he screamed and spilled and soiled everything, from his uniform to his precious ship.

He swallowed hard, spoke even and slow. “Yes.”

While he doubted he’d masked much of this inner monologue from that watchful gaze – he’d adopted the helmet for very particular reasons – Techie appeared possessed of a composure Ren could only dream of sharing. “Then you can have it.” But one eyebrow rose, questioning more than mocking. “If you’ll take it, anyway.”

Clumsy hands closed on that slim form, fingers bruise-hard about the upper arms as Ren hauled Techie to his bare feet. Then: with his mouth he began to seek, first finding lips, and then secondly not knowing what to do with them. Still, he persisted. He had feared failure from childhood, but in the end always pushed through by refusing to believe himself wrong.

Stoic, Techie allowed it, moving to match where he could. But when Ren chanced to catch lips between teeth, Techie gave a sound of mute protest. As Ren drew back, he found the skin unbroken, but the lip already seemed over-red, already beginning to swell.

And it was anger and shame that had the rough words snapping out like a round of blastershot. “Am I not what you expected?”

“I…”

The uncertainty of that single word had him moving in once more. This second attempt proved easier than the first, even if it were still wrong. But Techie leaned back, even as Ren dug his fingers in deeper. He all but circled the thin arms, the muscle beneath spongy, far from toned. Hux would be wiry. He’d seen the man move. He knew something of how he would be.

“Are you reneging on our deal?”

But even that growl of roused anger left Techie, again, oddly unmoved; everything in his expression remained more weary than wary. “What do you want me to do, for you?”

This time, the uncertainty took him instead. “I…” Clearing his throat did little; he still could not form the words. Those eyes watched him still, expressive in a way that ought to have been impossible given their construction. The features around them were mobile and thoughtful in a way they could never be. And though they were exactly like the general’s, Ren had never seen—

“I want to fuck you.”

The words had come from him in a sudden violent tumble from numb lips; Techie only nodded. “I know.” And his forehead creased in light frown. “But do you know _how_?”

This bright flare of fury blinded him, red and hot and burning; when he blinked back to something like focus, he found his right hand fisted in the loose collar, Techie’s feet no longer flat upon the floor.

But even with only his toes barely scraping the alusteel, Techie just nodded. “You don’t.”

It would have been so easy to strike him. To thrust the frail body down upon the floor and kick, and stomp, and then drag up again for full fists. But Techie remained unmoved, dangling from his grip. Only those eyes moved, gathering endless data from expression and movement.

Hux had never looked at him this way. The general _had_ seen Ren’s face, and on more than one occasion – but every look he had ever taken of him had been only fleeting, and always accompanied by the faintest of sneers. In the end he always turned away, turned back to his work with nose and chin tilted high, spine ramrod straight beneath the cursed perfection of that kriffing uniform.

“It’s okay.” Though the words were low, Ren very nearly believed them. “I can show you.”

He’d learned many things that way – his training in saber forms had always been such, with demonstration given for the reason of imitation. And yet his skin prickled all over, stomach squirming and fingers aching in their almost-fists. “Are you mocking me?”

“Why would I?” Somehow, Techie managed to shrug, thin shoulders outlined in the tight lines of his bunched shirt. “But you can keep going the way you were.” And now he truly went limp, eyes at last turning away, refocusing on some point far past Ren’s left shoulder. “If that’s what you want.”

And for a single, blazing moment: it was exactly what he _did_ want. This man, on his knees, on his back, on his stomach – with hair pulled back, slim body stripped bare. Before Ren’s will he would become little more than a doll, a toy, an object bent entirely to his desires. And in that there was the vague memory of a wild-haired boy, seated on the floor, surrounded by an orbit of broken twisted metal, the sound of high hysterical hiccupping laughter. And then, too: the eyes of his father, wary and afraid, silent in the doorway as he looked upon what his hubris had helped create.

“No.” He did not even realise he had let Techie back down to the floor, only that his hands had fisted at his sides, tremulous and yet still. “No, that’s not what I want.”

“Okay.” His bare feet shuffled upon the floor, and one hand rose, pushed back through his too-long hair; for the first time, true uncertainty shone through. “Well, can I show you, then?”

Ren could not be entirely sure what that might mean. But already Techie was turning, passing before him, the motion revealing for the first time the existence of another slim and closed door. As it hissed into the wall at the press of quick fingers, he slipped inside; only when it had opened fully did Ren move to follow, his eyes moving quick over the revealed space within.

“You sleep here?”

“Yes.”

He seemed to take no insult in Ren’s incredulousness. But there remained the hint of a question, though more in his expression than the statement itself, which managed well enough without a rising intonation. Ren’s own mouth had turned somehow dry. He did not know how he would say his thought aloud.

“You don’t…mind.”

And yet he spoke it without conscious thought. Techie only shrugged, the stretched collar of the loose shirt almost slipping down to reveal the curve of one shoulder. “It’s where it always happens.” And then, again, that faint frown, the one that gave his features a disarming, almost alarming veneer of perfect youth. “Why, do _you_ mind?”

Looking at the bed, he found it to be little more than a low and narrow thing, barely fit for the simplest of purpose. “Not now,” he said. “Not if it’s only ever you and me.”

“If that’s how you want it to be.”

Ren had never liked other people touching his things. But he stood still now, only watching as Techie began to disrobe. There really was not much to his clothing; the loose sweatshirt was worn over nothing beneath, and he skinned out of trousers and underwear at the same time. The body revealed was much too skinny, where he suspected Hux, beneath his own ridiculous uniform, would be simply slender. But it would be _work_ , to peel the general out of what was more armour than mere fabric. And here, and now, Techie stood before him, naked and unassuming.

And available.

“Should I undress you?”

“No.” It was spoken too quick, before he’d even consciously made the decision. “No, I’ll do it.”

First, he unclipped the lightsaber from his belt. He had barely even considered its presence, but then he so rarely went anywhere without it. With the weight of it in his gloved hands, Ren allowed himself a moment of strange pause.

“Is that your laser sword?”

He did not look up. “Yes.”

“Did you build it yourself?”

“Yes.”

His curiosity pressed against Ren’s mind like the wash of incoming tide upon some distant shore. But Ren gave it no heed, setting it aside and far from Techie’s reach. In turn Techie turned; bent over, now, he seemed thin as a slip of flimsi. As he rummaged in the small cabinet by his bedside, Ren set about stripping away his own clothes. It left him alone, awkward in his nakedness.

As if sensing his uncertainty, Techie straightened, turned back: and drew a hissing sharp breath, eyes opening wide. The old anger, of years ago, flooded his veins: the memory of the mockery of Ben Solo, with his ill-fitting limbs, over-large features, ragged hair, aura of perfect strangeness.

When he spoke, his voice had turned oddly hoarse, pitching ever so slightly higher. “I…can touch you, right?”

Even as his fingers flexed at his sides, even as his shoulders tensed and his feet moved to unconscious stance, he felt that curl of heat low in his groin, again. “If that’s how it starts.”

“We can start that way,” Techie said, perfectly agreeable even as he cocked his head again, eyes still unnaturally fixed. “It’s probably just as easy if I show you how it works, anyway.”

This time, it was Techie who stepped forward first, hands raised to the level of his own hips, pausing just a moment before he began to explore. At the first touch, Ren flinched; Techie himself drew back, as if burned. And when their eyes met, Ren thought for a moment only of retreat. Of turning, of leaving.

But there could be no escape for him, not now. He could leave the field only after it had been razed and burned to ash. But Techie’s eyes dropped, unmindful of the danger – or perhaps utterly aware, but knowing his own retreat had long ago been cut off, he simply remained. And his fingers, callused and clever, began their curious path over skin and muscle, mapping his torso like unknown planetary topography. He lingered long over the press of collarbone, the swell of biceps; Ren closed his eyes, already aching in every awakening twitch of hardening flesh, for all Techie had not ventured hardly so far.

 And so it came as bright surprise when one hand closed firmly about his dick. The indrawn breath choked in his throat, hands fisted, his spine a curved bright sparking wire. Techie did not look up, already down on his knees. His eyes narrowed a little as he pushed at the skin beginning to draw back from the thick head, teasing there a little before he began to work him to hardness. Already Ren felt dizzied, unanchored, too far from the wall or the bed. But Techie paid him no heed, dipping his head, taking him in right to the root.

He knew he gripped too hard; even in his blurred vision, he could see where his fingers branded that papery skin, bruising hard and deep. But as tongue and lips moved, Ren could only lean more of his weight upon those shoulders, hunched forward and breathing laboured. But it proved only brief torture, even as he felt primed to go early, and hard. Techie pulled back, lips slick and shiny, a string of saliva linking him still to his cock; his tongue moved, breaking the connection even as he glanced up, locked their eyes. He remained close enough that the heat of every spoken word shivered across his dick like feather-light touch.

“I can get you off now,” he said, deeply diffident. “But I want that thing in me. If that’s okay with you.”

Ren didn’t have words. That didn’t surprise him; when he’d learned to give himself to instinct and to the Force, words had deserted him, rendered utterly unnecessary. Techie himself seemed at peace with this as he took Ren’s hand, leading him to the bed. Even as Ren jerked at the intimacy of the gesture, Techie was already smoothing out the thin coverlet, indicating with one tilt of the head he should lie there. At first, he blanched; to be on his back would be vulnerable, exposed.

“You can fuck me from the top, if you really want to,” Techie said, quiet, “but I think you’ll like this.”

Instinct told him to deny it: to resist any idea that he should be the one beneath, the one dominated. But Techie was already taking a slim tube he’d set upon the nightstand, squirting out translucent fluid onto his fingers. As Ren watched, he reached behind himself – and though Ren could not see, he _knew_.

“Do you want to watch?” But already he turned, inclining forward from the waist; his slim fingers had disappeared between the narrow cheeks, slipping deeply inside.

“You can get closer, if you want.” He twisted his wrist, exposing himself just a little further; Ren caught a flash of reddened skin, of slick fingers moving in and out. And then Techie gave a little gasping hitch of breath, grimaced just a little. “But it won’t be long. Until I’m ready.” And then, with a sudden high chuckle, “Even for _you_.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Techie, now hunched forward, turned back; his bright eyes cut through even the fall of his long hair. “You’re huge,” he said, blunt, frank. “That’s why I want it this way.” He turned back, now with three fingers, pushing deep. “But if you want it the other way, fine.”

The bed felt cool beneath his skin, heated and prickling as it was. Across the narrow room, Techie gave another low sigh; without thought, Ren’s hand crept towards his dick, curling around its girth. The rough skin dragged with every tremulous stroke, the pain sharpening, focusing the swell of his rising pleasure. And Techie, now, pushed four fingers deep; even as he groaned, Ren’s voice rose in faultless counterpoint.

And his fingers slid free, Techie turning back, already reaching again for the lubricant. “Slow down,” he advised, even as he dribbled more over his fingers. “I want to try it for myself.”

Ren’s spine arched at the coolness of the slick, and for a sharp dreadful moment he felt orgasm closing around his balls like a vice, threatening to spill everything far too soon. But Techie’s fingers pressed at the base of his cock, knowing and sure, until he subsided again. Even as Ren turned wet eyes upon him, accusing and aching, Techie straddled his hips, pushed his dick along the rim of his ass.

“Are you ready?”

Ren only stared. With a sigh, Techie allowed himself slow controlled fall, sinking down upon him. The heat and the pressure of it had Ren’s back arching, again, but for all Techie’s slight weight he somehow held him down, gave him anchor. At full seat, he paused, and then leaned forward. With hands splayed upon the broad plains of his chest, he rose, again.

For long moments, which were but seconds lengthened to hours, Ren could only breathe – and choke on every one breath. Techie moved over him, against him, around him: the warmth of him was clenching and curious, every upward motion a gentle tease, every downward thrust a suckerpunch to the gut. He moved in simple easy rhythm, dragging him so close to an ending, yet never letting him quite find that final crescendo.

And then he paused, his own breathing low and hard, sweat-damp hair hanging in his eyes, narrow chest rising and falling. Ren stared up, fingers clawed into the coverlet, eyes stung with sweat and salt.

“Can I touch you?”

Techie started, as if roused from some dream; when he looked up, his eyes were a strange and brilliant calm in the storm that was the rest of his body. “Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

A mistaken confession, given too easy – but no mockery could be seen in those odd eyes, even as Techie shifted again on the aching hardness of his cock. He just moved slow now, just keeping him on the edge. Under any other circumstance, Ren would have seized him rough about those skinny hips, holding him, making him move hard and fast until his pleasure took over everything in sudden white-hot heat.

But instead of leaving a strung-out necklace, beaded purple-black bruises all along the papery-pallor of skin: Ren reached between them an unsure hand, let it pause a moment longer. Just beneath its weight was Techie’s cock, long and slender, weeping at its naked tip. Ren had never touched another. And this one had another kind of strangeness, existing as it did without the hood of skin that covered his own. Of course it would have retracted to come to this full, flushed hardness – but could not help but trace fingertips around the head, light about the circumference, and know that that skin had been cut away, once.

And Techie now stuttered to a stop, gasping. Ren withdrew, his own cock still twitching deep in that heat. “Should I not—”

For a moment, Techie moved not, hunched over and breathing hard. When he rose, he threw his hair back, eyes all preternatural sheen. “Lord Ren,” he said, and there was a wild grin upon his features, fierce and free. “Do it. Whatever you want.”

“Kylo.” It came sudden, ridiculous, nothing but a mistake. But it was one repeated: once, twice, too many times to take back. “Kylo. Call me _Kylo_.”

“Kylo.” Both lips and tongue moved, slow and exploratory about the syllables, the shape of it. Hux had never spoken his name, and this did not change that. Ren could not even pretend otherwise; for all their identical genes, Techie simply did not speak like the general. He was too diffident, slower and somehow both careful and careless, all at once.

But it was enough. It was almost _better_.

“Kylo,” he repeated, breathless, now, “you’re ruining my concentration.”

He had not even realised he had taken the cock in his hand, moving his hand up and down in broad bold stroke. “Good,” he said, the words rumbling like brontide given over to true thunder. “Come on. I want to taste you.”

With a gasp, strangled and high, Techie was taken by his own ending; his release first spurted, then dripped over Kylo’s fingers; he let go, turned his hand, let it pool in his palm. And there, it stopped. For all his bold words of but a moment ago, he had no real concept of what he had chosen to do.

And then: his tongue slipped out, traced a long line over those of his own palm, tasted salt and pleasure and _Techie_.

“Kylo.” The whisper of it shivered through him. He slid his own fingers between his lips, pressed tongue over callus, swallowed hard, over and over. And, still upon his cock, Techie began again to move. It was almost too easy to give over, to follow him over, and just let himself go.

The bed was too small, but somehow they lay there together: Ren, upon his back, Techie wedged into the space between bed and hard wall. Ren had never truly liked being touched, had often shied away from the easy affection even of family. And yet he felt no impetus to rise, not now.

“You’re very good at that,” he said, the words odd in this small space. But he didn’t long yet for his vocoder, for the mask of his helmet, one small room away.

Techie shifted at his side, salt-sticky skin rasping in delicious drag over his own. “Can you be so sure?” he asked, nothing coquettish in it at all. “I’m only your first.”

Stubborn, he turned his head, met the shock of those strange eyes, and found them oddly lovely. “It was _good_.”

A sigh, and he stretched, in what small capacity the space allowed him; already, his gaze had turned upward, to the close confines of the low ceiling. “I’m his clone.” Bitterness bled from every syllable, sharpened and hard. “And if one thing seems to run strong in the paternal Hux line, it’s the need for sex.”

Ren turned his own gaze to the ceiling. His own heritage had given him many a boon, but the burdens were more than capable of outnumbering them. “You enjoy it?” he asked, awkward, regretting the boorishness of it a second later. But Techie only shifted his head, not quite a shake.

“Sometimes. It depends on who it was.” Grimacing, he added, sudden and sharp: “That lieutenant, he was always crying. Before, after, during. It got dull. But he was usually gentle, at least.”

Alert, Ren turned his head, body grown taut. “Who hurt you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Though it could not quite be called a warning, Ren still heard the forbidding note beneath the light tone. “Besides, I might be stuck in here. But I have my ways.”

They fell to silence, again. Ren knew he ought to rise, for all the etiquette of such an encounter had never been a part of his education on these matters. And Techie had so often said it, in several different ways: _do what you want_.

But he still did not know what that actually was.

“Would you like to clean up before you go?”

Techie’s words had them both rising, for all Ren had not answered, in the affirmative or otherwise. He also did not need Techie’s instructions on the use of his shower unit, however it might differ from Ren’s own. Small and close though it was, the unit was not a standard sonic. Techie reached forward, turned the dual functioned knob firmly to water.

“There are some perks to the position,” he said, for all he had not looked around to meet Ren’s faint questioning gaze. But as the water began to sheet over them both, he turned around, and raised one eyebrow.

And he did not go.

It should have been a mess of elbows and knees, of bodies pressed too close to even imagine the result of cleanliness. Yet, Ren could not hate it. It had almost a hypnotic quality to it: the motions, the movements, his mind falling to quiet as he soaped himself up. Even in the presence of another, Ren fell to something very much like relaxation.

Techie started, looked sharply down. “Are you…”

Ren’s own eyes dropped, as quick as did his stomach. But it was too late, and it was over, besides. Still, he watched the last of it go, following the swirl of yellow down the narrow drain. But there was no shame, exactly. And when he glanced up, he found the faintest hint of a smile.

He did not think Hux could ever have smiled that way.

“You really aren’t used to this, are you.”

The words brought forth a burst of humiliation, anger. But clever hands rose, resting light upon the flush rising in his cheeks. They were almost of a height, for all there seemed so little of him. But there was a kind of strength imbued in every spare inch of him, and it was something Ren could not understand. He himself had always rebelled against the prisons others had attempted to put him in; when so enclosed, would bash his head against the walls until one or the other split wide open. But Techie remained within his own, and instead made something of it to suit himself.

“Will you come back?”

It could only be but croaked, when the words finally escaped the tight confines of his throat. “I’m not leaving yet.”

“Oh. Well, then.” Though he made a noble enough attempt to shift downwards, such small space provided no room for him to go to his knees. Pursing his lips, an expression that made him resemble remarkably Hux growing annoyed over some trifle upon the bridge, Techie pressed closer and let one hand close about his cock.

“Will this do for now, do you think?”

It would not. Instead, Ren thought of something he had heard, something he had seen, in the mind of another. Moving his own hand between them, he took Techie in his own hand, revelling already in the odd feel to it. This was only the third time he had had another in his hand this way. But he did not pump it as he had before. Shifting, instead, Ren drew him closer still, his own legs slightly spread. Only when the slim cock had slid between his thighs, did he press them close and tight.

The look in his red-rimmed eyes had turned quizzical. “Kylo?”

And the name shivered through him like the aftershock of orgasm. “I want this.”

A faint smile, and he said nothing more. Techie simply let himself be held close. Ren’s own broad hands skimmed down over the scars of his back, coming to rest over his ass – and there they were pushing in, _inviting_ him in.

It was not much movement, but it pressed his own cock up against the smooth soft belly. And the patter of the water continued to fall, like rain. Hux had been born on Arkanis, raised there until the Empire had begun its long painful decline. He had not seen it since childhood, or so Ren suspected; Arkanis had been part of the Republic since its annexation. He had been there himself, in another guise, in another life – in the company of his mother, who had herself been Alderaanian. The strange familial alliance between the planets had called her back, and that more than once. For his own part, Ben Solo had never seen skies so grey, rains so constant.

Techie had not been born on Arkanis. He supposed Techie had come out of a growth unit, development accelerated beyond the formative years; the human limits of what a mother might birth from a womb would be quite irrelevant under such circumstance. But here: this gave him something like what had been his, in another form, in another body.

They shared it when the pleasure came; but even as it ebbed away, they did not let go. The water had not ceased, still impossibly warm, still coursing over skin and hair and lips and mouths. Ren kept his eyes closed, and let it fall on them both.

 

*****

 

“I have something for you.”

“More lube?”

“No.” The almost curt question, spoken from where he had not yet looked up from his current screen, had Ren frowning. But then, it only made sense that Techie would have a mind for the practicalities. “Have you run out?”

“No. But it would save the medical mouse droids coming down here.” This time he did turn around, having apparently finished with whatever it was that he’d been unable to abandon upon Ren’s arrival; his expression had turned ironic. “You wouldn’t think something without a face could look disapproving, but believe me: they can.”

Ren stepped closer, the small box under one arm. “I can order more,” he said, and then, perfectly offhand, “Even the human staff wouldn’t dare question why _I’m_ requesting a barrel of the stuff.”

With that familiar whir, his pupils opened wide. “A _barrel_.” Shifting, leaning back, he raised one eyebrow, crossed one leg over the other. “Well, if you want to get through that before the thirty-day expiry, we’d better get started.”

There was something uncomfortably _Hux_ in that movement: prissy, almost demanding. But a moment, and the illusion shattered itself; Techie pushed himself upward, already making for the doorway. With a hand, gentle upon his shoulder, Ren turned him back.

“I haven’t given you your gift.”

His frank surprise was the kind of thing that ought to hurt. “You actually have one?”

“You think I’m a liar?”

“I think the truth is a flexible thing.” He said it simple, honest enough; in that he was nothing like the general at all. And standing here before him, now, Ren had again that thought – that perhaps this had been a mistake. That the itch had been scratched, that he should back away from this facsimile and let it lie.

But then, Hux himself would have no use for such a gift, even if he were fool enough to try and offer it to him.

There was no tremor to his hands as he handed over the box, impersonal and functional as it was. Techie, for his part, seemed somewhere between bemused and curious. Only, when he opened it, he turned silent and still. It left Ren to wonder if he had made yet another mistake. There had been so many of them, in the end.

“It’s…a lot.”

“Well.” He shifted, bit back the frustrated anger that had begun to throb at the back of his mind. “You seem to _make_ a lot, so.” Then, knowing himself for a fool and hating every second of it, “I know you can probably get that stuff anywhere, but—”

“Kylo.” He looked up, then, eyes shining as brightly as the spools of copper wire nestled in the small box. “Thank you.”

He turned away, moved to settle it amongst his other things. It left Kylo only to watch, awkward, unknowing of what he had done – of what he had even _wanted_ to do. “Are you busy? I could come back.”

Kylo Ren never asked such questions. Techie only took it in stride, turning back, waving one hand in careless sweep over his screens. “No. You’re here. It can wait.”

“Are you sure?”

It was that, somehow, that had him frowning. “Do you ask that of anyone else?” But it was curiosity that had his head tilting, the speculative look more in his expression than his eyes.  “Or do you just command them to do what you want?”

It prickled along under his skin, hot and hungry. “Do you _want_ me to command you?”

But Techie shook his head. “No. Not really.” And he took his seat again, sudden, too heavy. “I’m not a military man, remember?”

He allowed himself but the faintest hint of bitterness. It still drew Ren forward, magnetic and demanding; hunkered down at his side, he looked up, lower in height but never smaller. The faintest frown line had carved itself between his eyes, bisecting his brow. In this, in the shadows, even with the hair, even with the eyes, he looked remarkably like Hux himself.

“Do your eyes pain you?”

Now, the expression deepened into a true frown. “You’ve never asked me that before.” But he said it more to himself than to Ren, and said eyes looked up, towards the door. Ren, hands ungloved, raised them to rest upon his thighs; they lay for only a moment, and then tightened.

“ _Do_ they?”

He glanced down, his usual weariness returned in full measure. “What does it matter?”

Answering such question felt beyond him. And his effort felt weak, insubstantial. “It matters.” But he pressed on all the same, hands very hard on him now. “Have you had those for a long time?”

He blinked, only once. “I don’t remember their installation.”

“It must have been imperfect, if they bother you even now.”

The insistence had him shifting in that threadbare workchair, though with Ren before him, he could never rise. “I didn’t say they did.”

“But they _must_.” One hand rose, hovering just above the redness that ringed the right eye. Techie flinched away before he could touch – and his own reply was just as reflexive, for all he hadn’t said the words in years, had not meant them for even longer. “I’m sorry.”

Techie did not meant his gaze. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I could ask.” The words kept coming, unheedful of sense. “Have a medical droid—”

“Kylo.” And somehow, they were almost sad. “They’re functional.” And his hands shifted over Ren’s own, before withdrawing back to himself. “That’s all that matters.”

While he did not really recall standing, he found himself staring down at him, lips twisted. “Are you worried _he’ll_ find out, if I ask for it?”

He only sighed. “Armitage already knows.”

Techie was not the one he held this argument with. But, given their shared features, their locked gaze felt a challenge, a battle. Finally he managed but a single word: “So?” And after it croaked out, he cleared his throat, found it still rough. “What does it matter, then?”

“He already doesn’t approve of this arrangement.” One screen made a restless noise; Techie glanced over, then flicked his eyes back, left it unattended. “He’ll ask you to let the others have me back, sooner or later.” He snorted at his own words, added archly, “And sooner, probably. The ranks are restless.”

The nausea struck him almost as hard as the fury. “Did you tell him I didn’t want to share?”

“I don’t think it would have mattered.”

Already the air about him tasted of fire, of ash and burned hope. “It matters to _me_.”

His eyes fell closed, his head pressed back against the headrest. “You can talk to him, if you want,” he intoned, “I already know it won’t matter.”

“Because he’s Hux?”

And those eyes opened now, hard and still. “Because _I’m_ Hux.” The laughter, guttering and hollow, gurgled in his throat. “Or at least, enough of me came from him to know better.” One foot kicked out, pressed the chair in sharp half-circle. “I should work.”

Ren caught it, spun him back. “You said you didn’t need to.”

“I also said the truth is flexible.”

“And so are you.” And his bare hands had him again, pulling him up. Those wide eyes only watched, body unmoving even as the mechanical irises focused, again: so strange and perfectly blue, for all the redness of the skin around.

“They hurt,” Ren said, and knew it to be true. Techie only shook his head.

“I can see.” And he blinked, again. “I’ll take a bit of pain, if it holds back the dark.”

Crushing his lips down, Ren stole from Techie whatever other words he might have had to say. And as Techie’s arms wound about him in turn, Ren bore him across the room, and then over the threshold and onto the bed. There, in the light, he stripped them both bare. On a starship, there was no night, no day. In some ways, there was no time at all. Knowing that, Ren took all the time he wanted.

And then, he took some more.

 

*****

 

“You’ve been fucking Techie.”

The sharp pronouncement, unheralded and unscheduled, left Ren too surprised to say anything but, “What?”

Hux did not answer, standing at loose attention behind his desk. It left Ren staring at him in this silence, mind turning over what such challenge in such circumstance might actually mean. Armitage Hux had always been a forthright man, by Ren’s own experience, but still he had not expected it like this. Not in the midst of his beloved “real” work.

Hux called him to his office over a half-cycle ago; busy with first training, and then the accompanying meditation, Ren had only bothered to answer the summons just now. But private though it was, enclosed from the bridge when the viewing port was closed and shuttered, they were but moments from his men, from his command. The shutters had been lowered from the moment he had entered, but Ren could not escape the image that emblazoned itself across his mind: the shutters, drawn back open. Hux, naked, against the transparisteel, on display. Ren, behind, holding his knees up, spearing him on his dick, still in his robes. The light of the spitting saber, cast aside on the ordered desk, turning everything beneath utterly aflame.

“I trust you’re enjoying yourself.”

Ren blinked, looked sharply upward. “That’s none of your business.”

“No. It’s _entirely_ my business.” With gloved fingers held tight at the small of his back, Hux strode about the desk, came to stand before Ren; even with the slight disparity in their height tilted in Ren’s favour, he still gazed down that long nose at him. “Techie was created to do the work I hadn’t the time to do myself. Oh, I still do my design and development, of course – what he does, it’s just grunt work.”

Ren had not shifted, glad for the immobility of the helmet’s flattened features. “But grunt work you would entrust to no-one else.”

“Perfection is not so easily achieved.” His lips curled in fierce half smile. “But he has other uses.”

“Which are currently not an option.”

“Ah, yes. Because he has _you_.” Leaning back, hips propped upon the desk at his side, Hux clicked his tongue; his arms had crossed over his chest, leaving him resembling nothing so much as an irritated schoolmaster. “He can’t leave that sector, Ren. So he can’t have been the one to seek you out.” When his head tilted, bright hair caught the bland white light, and turned it to golden corona flame. “ _You_ wanted _him_.”

Ren held his silence. His tongue ached where it had caught between his fiercely clenched teeth.

But Hux, ever the strategist, knew when victory put itself willingly within his long reach. “You sought him out,” he said, almost pitying, almost crooning. “But it wasn’t _him_ you wanted.” He made his strike now, pushing forward with serpentine speed, the long slim lines of his body pressed up hard against Ren’s own. “Let the whore go,” he said, the whisper like silk for all the helmet remained between them. “You can have the real thing, now.”

Not even the vocoder could completely mask the sudden laboured note of each breath he struggled to draw. “He’s not a whore.”

Hux snorted, one hand already rising to where the helmet’s catch resided. Ren had not even known he knew. But then, Hux had always been too observant for his own good. “He’s slept with enough of my men to staff Starkiller on a skeleton crew,” he mused, and pushed it. Hard. “And he did it all because I told him to.” Even as he remained very still, Hux took the helmet in both hands, pulled it free, met his eyes with pitying glee. “He’s just a _whore_ , Ren.”

“Stop saying that!”

But Ren did not move back, and Hux’s faint laughter suggested he’d already assumed his siege to be successful. “I suppose,” he said, light, helmet cast aside, one hand rising to loosely tangle about one lock of dark hair, “that this is where I tell you to _make me_.”

Ren jerked his head away. “You’ve probably still slept with more people than he ever will.”

“Well, I am the original.” One eyebrow raised, something almost unholy in his grin. “And I _am_ the best.”

In the end, Ren had to confess the truth: he knew this body so very well. He knew exactly how to move, to manipulate – but he, perhaps, had been the one manipulated, for he was now stripping him out of that damned uniform until the general lay buck naked before him, spread wanton over the ruin of his own desk. But the fantasy, one played out over months and years, now felt hollow, colourless, unnecessary. Even as he reached beneath his belt, beneath surcoat and trousers to free only his cock, Ren wanted only to be naked himself. To have those hands and lips over him; to feel him truly, those hands somehow scornful and worshipping both.

Hux proved demanding, even in the lower position. He took Ren willingly and deep, every thrust of hips a sharp demand, a fierce command. Hands like claws dug deep in his shoulders; narrow thighs pressed into his waist like a vice, legs locked around his knees to draw him deep even when Ren felt he had nowhere left to go.

And when he came close, Hux opened his eyes, and Ren stilled. They were not the complex, near clockwork blue. Instead they were clear and clean and brilliant, something violent strung out between the shades of blue and green, a war fought and never won.

“ _Kylo_ ,” he whispered, and then he was shuddering, groaning, coming hard and hot between their bellies. And the clench of his ass drew the same from him, greedy and bitterly victorious. Barely had it finished before Ren pulled out, turning away, the desk hard and angular beneath the ache of over-taxed muscles, of skin raked to rawness. His breathing held a deep and ragged rhythm, calming only in slow, pained minutes. The sound of Hux’s own comedown, at his back, sounded far more pleasured – winding down to sleepy satiation, even as one hand stretched out between them, traced a lazy pattern down the hunched line of his spine.

“Kylo—”

“ _Don’t call me that._ ”

The echo of it hung upon the air, like a traitor condemned and roundly executed. It swung, a moment, in an uncertain breeze. Then Hux spoke again, sharp and commanding, no shame whatsoever even as he sprawled naked before him, come still leaking from loosened asshole.

“It’s your _name_ ,” he said – and then, with wicked twist: “Isn’t it?”

Ren met his mocking gaze, even and hard. “You’ve never called me it before.”

“I’ve never had your dick up my arse before.” And he stretched, then, languorous and satisfied. “It does rather alter the dynamics.”

“No.” And still he could not look away. “It doesn’t.”

For the first time he began to frown; with one easy movement and no support of elbows or palms, he rose into a seated position. “And why not?” he demanded, and Ren felt the rise of a low, traitorous laugh from deep in his squirming stomach.

Somehow, he kept it there. “I can’t imagine you let every cock or cunt you’ve become acquainted with call you _Armitage_.”

Very still though he went, the fury of it shone from his eyes, low and pulsing. The man always did try to pretend he was as ice. But he _burned_ , beneath that smooth veneer: broken and blazing and _bright_. General Starkiller, they called him now. And yet they never knew how right they were. Armitage Hux was but a core of molten heat, painted over with snow and rock, dressed up in tight uniform. But form the right situation, input the correct firing sequence—

“I am a general,” he snapped, each word bitten off, utterly true for the fact he wore not a stitch of the trappings of that office. “I do not make it a habit, these days, to fraternise with the staff.”

“Even if they want it?”

He snorted. “Even if they want it,” he said, and again, his smirk turned nasty. “They have other options, after all.”

When Ren closed his own eyes, he heard, if only in his mind, the whir of another set. And he saw it, too: the _bright_. And when he opened them now, the colour that greeted him was instead somewhere between the wide open blue skies of Arkanis, so rare – and the more common green of the restless ocean, heavy with white-flecked waves, mask over the deep ugliness of what dwelt so deeply within.

“We can’t do this again.”

“Why not?” This close, it was simple enough for Hux to reach down, to wrap one hand about his cock; still half-stiff, it twitched with renewed interest already, even if the stamina was not yet up to such play. “You enjoyed it,” he said, accusatory and gloating both. “You _wanted_ it.”

“And now I’ve had it.”

He would be a fool, to think one such as Armitage Hux might take such to heart. The man himself loosed only hardened chuckle, the hand rough about his cock, again. “It won’t be enough,” he advised, slow, light; on anybody else, the tone might have been sing-song. “You don’t give yourself easy, Ren,” he added, and gave a slow sigh. “I knew that from the moment we met.”

He did not retreat. But the words were ending enough. “It’s done.”

“You wanted me from the first moment we met,” Hux mused, still stroking him to full hardness, again. “Why was that?” he asked, and looked up at him, penetrating and curious in a way that made Ren’s heart lurch. “What did you know, then?”

It took him a long moment to reply, tongue tied and heavy and strangely foreign, even in his own mouth. “You don’t believe in the Force.”

“Ah, but _you_ do.” And he pressed close, words given from his lips to Ren’s own. “What did you see, Kylo?” he asked, and his teeth ghosted over the tender bruised flesh. “Why was it _me_?”

He turned his head. “It doesn’t matter, now.”

He drew back, as if stung, hand falling away. And when Ren looked back, shoulders heavy with sudden exhaustion. Hux appeared so small, now, without the uniform. “Why? Because of _him_?” And his features devolved to a sneer, eyes flint-sharp and blazing. “Fancy that! The great and mighty warrior, can’t take a real partner. So he has to have the slave, instead.”

With head bent, he had already pushed his traitorous cock back into his pants, even as it painted his gloves in the hot brand of leaking fluid. “I’m leaving, now.”

“I’ll have him put down.” Ren turned sharply, caught a curl of lip in sharp promised victory. “No. I’ll _destroy_ him.”

And he shook his head, only weary, now. “You’d only be destroying yourself.”

Thrusting himself down from the desk, Hux stalked across the floor, naked and glorious, and pushed his face right into Ren’s own. “If that’s true,” he snarled, “then why him? Why not _me_?”

“I made my bed.” It was almost gentle. “I guess I’m going to fuck him in it.”

With the helmet in his hands, he turned; but even as he lowered it over his ears, he still heard Hux with perfect clarity. “You only want him because you can control him.” And he laughed, high and snarling. “Well, fuck you Ren! You can’t control _me_.”

But as the door closed between them, Ren closed his eyes, and saw only the bitter truth of it all.

_And that’s the reason why I’ll always want you, too._


End file.
